Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The Growth and Significance of Empathetic Marketing in Today's World

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another episode on THE RADCAST! In today's episode, host Ryan Alford and guest Mike Weston, Radical's Creative Director, talk about the traditional side of consumer relations and understanding your audience.This episode highlights the importance of understanding and relating with your audience. Having a solid relationship with your audience is pivotal for marketers. Tap into the emotions of your audience. This doesn't mean make them cry. Empathetic marketing is bigger than that. Walk in the shoes of your audience, relate with them, and share content and information that will benefit them.If you enjoyed this episode, share it on Instagram and tag us @the.rad.cast | Do you want to hear more from our host? - Give him a follow @ryanalford on Instagram. | Have a great week and we'll talk to you soon! #theradcast  If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now? You're listening to The Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast, a episode two years in the making, I might add. Mike Weston, good friend, creative director here at Radical. What's up, Mike? Hey, Ryan. It's a pleasure to be here. Finally. Took you long enough. You know, it's an open invite at all times, Mike. You know, it's just a matter of, like, fitting you on the busy Radcast schedule, you know? That's right, because we're really busy on the radical side. I know.

It's a good thing. Plus, I'm kind of shy. That's not true. That's not true. We'll pull it out of you. So, how's life been treating you? Good. Been really, really busy. A lot of stuff on our plates.

You know, holidays are coming up. Trying to get work done in advance of that. So we're fortunate in these times to be busy. That's right. It's a wacky, wacky world we live in. I know. So I know we're going to talk about and we we joked a little bit pre-episode about how some things in marketing change some things stay the same but empathy and marketing and we'll get to that but i do want mike you know people are starting to especially our subscribers to get to know radical and our team and we certainly talk about some of the work but i think it would be good perspective to just start with, like, let's do some bragging about some of your experience. I mean, let's talk about you in the ad business. You've been in the game a long time.

We both have. You know, you're beating me, but. Shocked I'm still alive, to be honest with you. Come on. But, no, for people listening, let's walk through the, you know, kind of your background in the ad business. You and I have been fortunate enough, at least I've been fortunate enough to work with you a few agencies now. But, you know, let's give people kind of that perspective. I know you've been in the game a long time and you've seen a lot, done a lot, and worked on some pretty impressive stuff, and still doing it here at Radical.

Yeah, well, thanks for that. But my career started in my hometown. I'm from New York City, born in the Bronx, raised in Westchester. I attended the School of Visual Arts, graduated with a degree in advertising, and I was really, really fortunate to land at an iconic agency, BBDO. It was a great place to start my career. On Madison Avenue, when a lot of agencies, BBDO, Doyle Dane, were still located on Madison Avenue now it's pretty much a word used to describe

the business overall but I was actually there and I was able to work on some really iconic brands early on I worked on Campbell Soup, Chunky the soup that eats like a meal I worked on Firestone Tires Lever Brothers

Contact Black & Decker, Hammer Mill Paper, just who's who of American companies. But I think the one that I'm probably most proud of being part of was Gillette. I was part of the Gillette team. And understand, teams were lots and lots of people because these accounts are so huge. But we were actually the team that developed and sold to the client and produced the early stuff for Gillette, the best a man can get. And we developed that sting, the best a man can get, that they still use to this day. And I've got to admit, I mean, it's been, I hate to say it, almost 30 years, but they're still using it.

And that's iconic. And, you know, I still admit, you know, it's not the greatest, honestly, it's not the greatest creative work in the world. It's not Geico or any of those things that we admire. But it's an iconic American brand. It's iconic. And you say to people, Gillette, and they're like, oh, yeah, the best American can. Yeah, okay, I was there.

I was there. So I'm very proud of that. But, you know, I left BBDO after about four years. It's a long story. New York City was probably where it's at right now. A lot of people wanted to get out because it wasn't a great place to be. And I was offered a job in Detroit by WB Donor, which is another pretty well-known agency. A lot of retail, a very intense environment, some would say sweatshop. It was, for me, at that point in my life, single, young, I lived for the business. That's all I wanted to do.

And I didn't mind putting in the long hours and, you know, being able to produce an awful lot of broadcasts because that was my goal at that point. I wanted more broadcasts in a very, very short period of time. And I had every intention of returning to New York City, but love intervened. And I met my wife, who was a Michigan girl and who was also in advertising, did not want to return or did not want to live in New York. So since then, our journeys have taken us from Detroit to, believe it or not, Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I worked for an agency called Lawler Ballard, which was a really great creative shop at the time and was bought by Earl Palmer Brown. And then from there, we ended up in Louisville, Kentucky at the oldest independent ad agency in the country, even to this day. They're still independent, called Doe Anderson. And at Doe Anderson, I was able to touch Maker's Mark, which is another great brand.

But primarily Valvoline, and specifically Valvoline and Snow Oil Change, and was able to do a lot of really good work on that. After that, I was lured down here to Greenville, South Carolina. I had to look on a map to see where the heck that was. But I was pretty sure when I was a kid going to Florida, the west coast of Florida, I was pretty sure we spent the night once in Greenville. Somewhere on the way to Florida or maybe close to Merrill Beach. Yeah, that's right.

And I was recruited down here by an agency called Irwin Penman, which is now called EP & Co. And it's really doing some really great work for some national brands. But that is where I met Ryan Alford. He was a young account exec on the Verizon account at that time. Fair statement. True statement. It's true. True.

But I was hired to work on a variety of other accounts that were not Verizon. Verizon was the huge account. And Ryan was part of that team. And I was heading up as a group credit director. I was heading up Unimoyal Tires, some other Michelin brands. And, you know, it was great. It was a wonderful town. I think the city really attracted us.

And Joe Irwin and Alan Bosworth and Gretchen Irwin were all really, really cool people. They'd started, honestly, I admire them to this day because they really started from nothing. You know, they had all come from New York. Joe was from here. And Gret they had all come from New York. Joe was from here. And Gretchen was from Lexington, Kentucky. And Alan was, I don't know, where was he from?

He grew up in North Carolina. North Carolina. I think it was Michigan originally. Yeah. Anyway, very smart people. And they were able to grow this agency into a player in the southeast. And I was there for about seven years and moved on to a couple of other shops. And then Ryan and I, Ryan went on to return to New York.

He did his stint in New York City. You know, worked on Verizon and worked for Hill Holiday. Yep. Pretty crazy. I know. And then, fate would bring us back together, and we both worked for,

another shop for a little while, down here, and then, Ryan decided to go off, and start his own gig, and you probably all know that story, but, you know,

I'm happy to say, we're reconnected. We didn't, we didn't work, together much, at Irwin Poundland, but, we knew each other,

and, stayed in touch, and now, now we've got this little, you know got this agency called Radical that's kind of gaining some momentum. And hopefully we'll grow. And, you know, I look to the Irwin Penland model because, again, Joe and Gretchen and Alan really grew that thing. And hopefully we can do the same thing here. Yeah, I think we're headed in the right direction. i think the work's been good i think you know mike has come on full time

and is you know nurturing the team and i think we're seeing the fruits of that with the work and the quality of it you know we're working with small to medium brands but that's that those brands are growing and both in number and and size uh you know which i think a lot of agencies start in that model but yeah start small and uh you know we listen we want you know our our stake in the stand is going to be like a lot of agencies hopefully uh creative that makes a difference and stands out not not necessarily wins awards but gets results and that's huge and it took me you know 25 plus years to realize that it's not about the award book. It's about creating success for the clients.

When you create success for the clients, you create success for everybody in the agency, and life is good. In this day and age, I feel like those worlds can coexist, the work being good and the clients being successful. It may not always be as provocative as you want it to be potentially. But with social media and other channels, it's given, I think, fresh life to pushing the envelope a bit.

Yeah, I think so too. And there's so many more tactics out there now to get the message out. But again, I've had to forget everything I learned in the first 25 years of being in this business, you know, with the advent of digital and digital basically being the medium of choice for most marketers and certainly most of our clients. But one thing has not changed. I'm convinced of this. And that is you still need to have a strategy. You still need to have a roadmap. And creative is still important.

Again, I tell people this all the time, but the average consumer is exposed to over 8,000 ad messages a day. 8,000. If you live in a major metropolitan area, it's probably 10,000. We don't even realize we're seeing ad messages, but they touch us all the time. And it's still a matter of breaking through that clutter. How do you break through?

And creative is a big part of that. It's a huge part of it. And I think what's starting to come back to, I think people recognize that, and I've said this a lot, that the greatest denominator of success is the creative. the greatest denominator of success is the creative. Like, it's like, it is like a lot of things are, of the tactics are table stakes, but the creative is what ultimately breaks through and drives it. But I think where you're seeing a marriage of is

the creative has to come quick. You know, like that's, it's because, and not just because it's the AEs like me who used to bug the shit out of you, you know, and still do. It hasn't left. But it used to be just because the AE was being anal and wanted to get it done and wanted to please the client. And now it's because attention is so fleeting. You know, the channels are so fleeting.

Oh, my gosh. It's amazing. Everyone's got the attention span of a net, myself included. The channels are so fleeting. Oh, my gosh. It's amazing. Everyone's got the attention span of a net, myself included, man. It's very hard to get anybody to stop and really spend time with your messaging.

And I think that's true for most agencies. I mean, of course, again, I mentioned the media tactics. Certainly, you still have television, you know, although I discovered that the younger generations, my kids included, barely watch TV. I can't believe it. I cannot get my kids to sit down and watch something on Netflix with me. They want to go upstairs and they want to lay in their bed and they want to look at their personal devices and do TikTok and everything else that their generation does. It's amazing. They don't read newspapers, right?

No. I still to this day, although I get most of my news from my news feeds on Google and Apple, that I still love to turn a newspaper page, to read a paper, to read the printed word. The rustling of the paper, I still love that. But I have to recognize that there are very few people like me out there, and most of what we do, we're not reaching them anyhow. Well, it's actually a good transition to, you know, kind of the topic du jour. I think you've seen this bubbling up, I mean, in your LinkedIn feeds,

and you hear it, you know, within the industry as a buzzword. I think, as we'll talk about momentarily in a way it's the way the way brands should always be thinking but this notion of empathy and marketing especially with you know uh covid going on and everything that's happened that's really thrown everyone's life different you know and thrown it for a twist you know from moms that have to stay at home to dads that have to stay at home to kids being home all the time to just the realities of the economic impact, the social impact, the events, you know, we can go on and on and on. But it has become more important than ever that brands think this way about their messaging.

But what's been kind of your overall perspective on seeing that dynamic? And I know you've seen the buzzword creeping into a lot of discussion. Yeah, that's the other thing that's changed about this business. There's more buzzwords than I can keep track of. It's like content, content. Didn't I used to be creative? Didn't I? Wasn't that creative?

Wasn't that copywriting and art direction design come together to create the concept. Okay, content, content, content. I get it. It's much more than that. But, you know, empathetic marketing is interesting. And, you know, I joke that I think we used to call it customer relations, right? You want, you as a marketer want, you want to dwell on the hearts and minds of your customers and your audience. And empathetic marketing should be ingrained into all your business strategies.

It's not philanthropy, but it's certainly empathy before profit. It's connecting with customers on a positive level, not just because you want them to buy, buy, buy. Yeah. You know? And so I think what's interesting, you know, we're both, you know, having done this a long time, somewhat cynical with the buzzwords because it's at the end of the day as a brand and with anything that you, any messaging or strategy is how do we want consumers to think, feel, and act? And if you're thinking through that lens, then in a moment when you know the consumer is in this position, what's the insight about your target and what action do you want them to take? I feel like empathy marketing, the empathetic notion belongs in the insight of the consumer.

Moms and dads are home. Like if you're Zoom or if you're a product that plays perfectly into this, the insight is the fact that people are home. They're using their house more. That's the insight as much as anything. It's funny. American Greetings did a really nice effort. It was essentially for Mother's Day.

Obviously, they sell greeting cards. But it was a job interview, and it was people interviewing for the toughest job imaginable. And that job required that they work 24-7, that they work nights and weekends. Right. These people were interviewing for this incredible job and they were serious about it as it turned out they're they're they were interviewing for a job as a mother right and american greens is being empathetic towards towards uh to moms and we know what the hell you go through you have an incredibly tough job you know and the spillover effect there is dad kids make sure she gets at least a nice

card on mother's day yep i love that that is truly the brands i think that are breaking through are the ones where the difference to me is the pandering empathy versus the insight like what you just said there is the emotional tug of that, of like playing into their mindset and being thoughtful in it. What I can't stand is the brands where you feel like it's complete pandering or like complete,

we've suddenly taken on this cause, you know, like cause marketing. Like that's not empathetic marketing. That's like, I just see through that. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. That's like, I just see through that. Yeah, yeah. No, you're absolutely right. It's funny because it reminds me, I've worked on Scott Paper at BBDO. And my partner and I, back when we worked all the time as art director, copywriter teams, came up with something from Scott Paper called Helping Hands.

Looking back on it, it's kind of like every time you buy a roll of, you know, a roll of Scott paper, you know, toilet paper, we're going to donate X amount to a child, a children's charity. I can't remember what the charity was at this point. But now looking back on it, it was very, it was disingenuous. Right. You know, because there wasn't, there wasn't any specific organization. We're just going to donate money to children's charities. And it seemed like a ploy to me, again, in hindsight. Yeah. To sell more toilet paper. Yeah.

You know, so I think about something that's truly an empathetic marketing that worked. And it wasn't that long ago. And I think it was this summer, Delta Airlines. Hundreds of its flights, hundreds of flights were delayed because of storms. All right. And passengers were stranded on runways all over the place in Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana. flights. Hundreds of flights were delayed because of storms. And passengers were stranded on runways all over the place in Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. And Delta took the opportunity to actually order pizzas

for, I don't know if it was all the passengers on all the flights, but in certainly some of the markets, they had pizzas delivered. I don't know how they got through TSA. But they had them delivered to the planes. I love that. And they served them pizza. And listen, here's the thing.

So, empathetic marketing, customer relations back in the day, whatever the heck it was, right? It took literally days and weeks for that to get out. But this was getting out. The news of Delta's benevolence, right, or at least taking care of their customers, got out immediately because of social media. It was out there in a heartbeat, man. It was big news. And the spillover effect there is, you know what? Not all airlines are uncaring and callous. Yep.

You know? You know, I saw, it's funny you bring up Delta. I just read this last week. They have, and I don't know if it was done by, you know, marketing or demanded or whatever. But they are literally handing out the flight attendants personal handwritten specific notes to everyone on the plane. Like for flights that were over like three hours or something like that. The flight attendants were writing like, Mr. Harrison, I want to thank you for flying today. Our industry has been impacted heavily. You don't know how much we appreciate your willingness to continue to fly

and how much it provides for our livelihood. I mean, go figure. Personal written note. That demonstrates a company, Delta in this case, or whatever that airline was. It was Delta. Same company. Beautiful. Going above and beyond customer service, which, again, you don't necessarily expect from airlines.

No, you don't necessarily expect from airlines. No, you don't. But Delta has always been, I don't know, a higher kill for me. They have. They absolutely have. They're no Allegiant. Sorry. Hey, it's a radcast. We keep it real. We keep it real.

But they're demonstrating their empathetic side by truly caring for customers. And that's what empathetic marketing is all about. And I think that's really the point that I think for consumers is like, you know, there's certain things, and we've talked about this on a few other episodes, like convenience rules, like, you know, a pack of gum in the line. Do you know if they did empathetic marketing or how much money they gave to charity or is it just convenient because it's in the store line you know there's certain purchases that are less considered than others right yeah but at the same but for most things when you know a brand

truly cares is going out of the way we look we all know it's we're in capitalistic country like people know brands are in business for money go figure really yeah i don't i don't know i mean after the last election we might be headed for communism but not going there not going there not going there not political uh but uh anyway the the point being i think consumers know when when brands are making a true effort right you know when it's genuine or when it's disingenuous, people are, they're not fools. Yeah, exactly. They absolutely know.

If you were a small business or brand and you know, you might be listening or something like that. Are there things or ways that you might would, you know, you feel like for, I don't know, from someone in the creative, you know,

side of things like that, they should, I don't know, think about or consider in trying to do this more or better? Well, I think, I think first of all, they have to pay attention to, to their feeds. Yeah. And they have to act quickly and decisively when they do get a complaint or criticism. I mean, I've seen, I've seen some seen some clients, some marketers, some products who have clearly, clearly been slammed and there's been no response whatsoever.

And I think that's the worst thing you can do. You know, Airbnb. Do you guys remember this? There was some discrimination. Somebody had been legitimately discriminated against because of the color of their skin. I don't remember that. It was earlier this year. Airbnb, they had reserved a place,

and the owner of the space, the room, the apartment, discovered that they were African American. And they basically... Scary that shit even happens anymore. It's disgusting. Yeah. It's disgusting. It shouldn't happen, not in this day and age.

Anyway, so the guy consequently was refused his booking, and he reached out to Airbnb. And Airbnb, they could have sent him, whatever. You know, moved on. But what they did is they not only got him another room, another place to stay, they also created an open doors policy, basically, as a result of this. So it was much bigger just to one guy. Because I think they were smart enough to realize this probably happens a lot more than we think.

So they can't change the mindset of the person who refused the booking, although they can probably kick them out of Airbnb. Yeah, hopefully they did. Hopefully. But when a guest faces discrimination, Airbnb is going to place them in another listing or pay for a hotel on them. I love it. Yeah. And they could have easily written it off. Yep.

And I think back to what you're saying, like listen to your customers. I think that's for me, whether you're a small, medium, large brand, whether it's customer service, you have to have a pulse on your customer base. There has to be some kind of feedback loop. They're going to come to you through social media, like you just said, one way or another. And if you're either listening or you're not but you whether it's surveys or like incentive and i know you see some of this like incentivization but you've got to be having a lever that you can pull to know how your customers feel you know because in this day and age if you don't they're not going to be a customer for long no no you're absolutely right you know from from a creative standpoint i think that there's a lot of opportunities, certainly. Listen, that pizza thing, Delta, I'm sure it wasn't a creative team that came up with that.

It's a simple idea. Operational. One of the things I like about Radical and one of the things I've tried to incorporate in other agencies I've been at or that the opportunity to lead teams was that a good idea can come from anybody, even an account executive. I'm willing to acknowledge that. In fact, one of the best headlines I've ever been a part of was written by a print production guy. And I think that's big with empathy marketing.

If you will, as a company, embrace the notion, or a brand, or an agency, or whatever, that ideas can come from anywhere, you're going to get those broader perspectives because your customer base is so wide and large. And so Sally in operations or HR or accounting or account executive or Robbie who's doing operations, whatever that is, they have a perspective that perhaps the people that would typically be the idea people or the marketing people might not have.

And so how do you bring that perspective? Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, there are opportunities for creatives to actually develop what we do, create spots, create stories, video. For example, another airline, JetBlue, you know, etiquette is something that can be sorely missing on flights. Yeah. Especially now, people refusing to wear face masks, people getting into fights.

I mean, it's absolutely crazy. And I remember seeing JetBlue had created a whole series of flight etiquette videos. I remember seeing JetBlue had created a whole series of flight etiquette videos. It was just hilarious. But they banged the point home in a really creative, memorable way. What's on your radar as radicals growing, brands you're paying attention to in general? Where do you go for, I mean, creative energy? You know, I mean, now it's like, I know with social, I mean, like social is kind of the answer for everything,

but is there something that feeds your spirit? So obviously there's the agencies I absolutely admire, like Martin and Goodby and Droga5 and still BBDO. Of course, I'm partial there, of course. Sure. There's still agencies whose work I'm constantly checking, Wieden and Kennedy. I mean, there's just so many really great agencies out there doing so much great stuff. And I like to tell my designers and copywriters, our designers and copywriters here, that, you know, guys, you need to spend time with those.

Be inspired, you know. Don't rip off the ideas, but be inspired by what you see. Because, you know, again, it's breaking through that clutter. There's so many messages out there, and they're all vying for your attention. They're all waving their hands, but no one is standing out. So certainly agency websites are a great place to go. I like to go to places like Vimeo. There's some really great creative stuff on Vimeo.

So I like to spend time there too. But there's influences everywhere. Thanks to the internet. I remember we used to have to wait for the latest edition of CA advertising annual to come out to get to see who's doing the greatest work.

And now with this internet machine it's at your fingertips. I love it. think you know in kind of you know recapping and and things like that I think if brands are if you're thinking about this and you're either working with a brand or your small business or something like that I would challenge you to get more in-depth with your strategy and your understanding your target and less about, I think, calling yourself in. We're doing empathy marketing this month or whatever. Like I think don't make empathy

marketing a buzzword. Make it a referendum on understanding the customers that that service that come to you, that you serve and building that into the insights for why you're doing something. And then I think leveraging more of your team and more people and all those avenues and perspectives to bring in a broader understanding. Yeah, that's a great point because, you know, I used to jokingly say, everyone's creative, it's just that some of us do it a lot better than others. And yeah, I'm creative, I can draw, I can write, but everyone is empathetic. And everyone can have an idea when it comes to empathetic marketing.

Yeah, I love it. And as I said before, it should be ingrained into any company's business strategy. I love it. Mike, really appreciate you coming on. My pleasure. Let's keep doing it.

Appreciate you being here. Hey, hey man, you don't know how much I appreciate you being with me on this ride and being part of Radical. And if you keep up with the Radcast,

keep up with Radical, you're seeing some of Mike's work. He's either touched it or built it or created it. So we appreciate having him. Yeah. And we'll see you next time here on the Radcast. Yes. Be empathetic.

Yo, guys. What's up? Ryan Alford here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. Ryan Alford here. Thanks so much for listening. Really appreciate it. But do us a favor. If you've been enjoying the Radcast, you need to share the word with a friend or anyone else. We'd really appreciate it. And go leave us a review at Apple or Spotify. Do us a solid. Tell more people,

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